1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a drug carrier having L-DNA nanocage structure and a pharmaceutical composition for treating cancer comprising the same.
2. Background of the Invention
DNA nanocarriers are an emerging class in drug delivery technologies. Differed from most of polymer-based carriers, they are fully biodegradable into non-toxic small nucleotides and easily controllable in size and shape at a tailor-made level.
Previously, it has been shown that biocompatible DNA could self-assemble to construct various three dimensional (3D) DNA nanocages including tetrahedra, bipyrimids, octahedra, dodecahedra and fullerene-like structures. Among them, the DNA tetrahedron has been considered one of the most practical DNA nanocages since it can be assembled simply from four DNA strands and prepared in high yield.
The recent demonstration about cellular uptake of the DNA tetrahedron into mammalian cells has opened a great opportunity for the nanocage to play important roles in biomedical applications. They are often internalized in mammalian cells in the absence of any transfection agent. These properties are valuable when they are employed in biomedical applications.
Recently, DNA nanocarriers have been utilized in intracellular delivery of bioactive molecules such as anticancer drugs, aptamers, antisenses, immunogenic molecules, and siRNA. DNA nanocarriers are particularly useful in delivery of nucleic acid cargos, since the vehicle and the cargo are the same nucleic acids and can thus be designed and prepared in an integrated feature without any conjugation chemistry. For the successful assembly of a cargo-loaded carrier, however, the sequences of the carrier and the cargo should be carefully designed and selected since not only the DNA nanocarrier but the oligonucleotide-based cargo also employs A-T and G-C base-paring patterns for construction of active motifs, which has a potential to disturb the self-assembly of the DNA nanocarrier. The probability of undesired assembly resulting from this interference would increase when more than one kind of nucleic acid-based cargos are attached to the carrier.
This application seeks priority to and incorporates by reference the following U.S. pending provisional patent applications. Methods and materials similar or equivalent to those described herein can be used in the practice or testing of embodiments of the present invention. All publications mentioned herein are incorporated by reference in their entirety. The documents, patents and patent applications referred to herein are hereby incorporated by reference.